District and Sessions Judge N Harikumar, while granting the bail, allowed Mamkootathil’s appeal against the dismissal of his bail application by a judicial magistrate's court that had denied him bail, stating that the allegations against him were serious and that he had similar antecedents.
In the complaint, the woman alleged that Mamkootathil promised to marry her and forcefully had physical intimacy with her.
The FIR in the present rape case was registered by the police after the survivor and her family met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at the Secretariat on Thursday and handed over a written complaint.
According to the agency, the allegations against the accused in the case also included possession and dissemination of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).
In a hard-hitting statement, AIADMK general secretary and former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) the protest was to highlight the abject failure of the DMK government in containing the atrocities against women.
The Bench, comprising Chief Justice Nitin Jamadar and Justice S. Manu, also nullified an earlier directive from a single judge, which had instructed the magistrate to issue an order for registering an FIR on the complaint.
The High Court had in February vacated the stay granted by it earlier on the trial proceedings against the actor, after the woman denied the claims that she agreed to an out-of-court settlement.
Eldhose Kunnappilly, informed the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) leadership, which had sought an explanation from him that he was innocent and the case was fabricated. The MLA has stated that the case was politically motivated.
Rejecting the plea, a Single bench of Justice Ziyad Rahman AA said the survivor might be ‘influenced’ by the ongoing ‘media trial’ in the case.
However, based on a sketch, a man has been detained on suspicion of being the accused in the case.
